In response to the question of the relevance of ‘classical’ African Studies to the contemporary need of the continent, this article explores the dynamics of leadership challenge as portrayed in Yorùbá music drama genre, using Duro Ladipo’s most popular folk opera: Ọba Kòso (The king did not hang) as a case study. Thematic exploration of the opera was carried out to establish the linkages between leaders’ (characters’) traits and styles as portrayed in the play, and Nigeria’s political leaders’ engagement and responses to social contracts with their citizens. By comparing the outcomes of the actions, inactions and (in) decisions of Nigeria’s political leaders and the attendant consequences on their subjects with those found in the opera. I argue that the African political leadership challenge is shaped by a combination of complex factors, including the leaders’ charisma and the quality of citizens’ engagements in the affairs of governance. These are largely occasioned by multiple effects of torrential and irresistible mob pressures on leaders. At the fringes of the debacle is a convergence of human fate and other coincidental elements within the various sites of the divide in the contestation for and utilization of power as a whole.

The contemporary Nigerian musical landscape occasionally becomes a site for contesting and negotiating the established ideology of Yorùbá patriarchy. These movements are evident in many women’s decisions to venture into drumming, an age-old male dominated musical profession. Informed by the theory of spatial trialectics, this article investigates gendered space in relation to dùndún drumming with a view to understanding the changing nuances of gender relations among the Yorùbá of southwestern Nigeria. Ethnographic techniques were used to generate data on Àrà and Àyánbìnrin, two well-known urban popular female dùndún performers whose aspirations and career trajectories reside outside the Àyàn lineage and spiritual tradition. Biographical accounts and lived experiences of both artists suggest that women’s agency in Yorùbá drumming is hedged by different, prevailing socioeconomic contexts, including a determination to challenge limitations to a career path and economic progress. By describing how female dùndún drumming may be regarded as a response to social and musical change, and discussing how issues of masculinity and femininity are constructed, negotiated and contested, I argue that the belief forbidding women from playing Yorùbá drums is not strictly applicable to the dùndún because the dùndún ensemble is more connected to social than religious performances.

Beyond the rhetoric and an intentional tribute to a retired teacher (professor), senior colleague and mentor, Claudius Olayemi Olaniyan, this essay re-examines how Yorùbá dùndún drummers across different generations utilize music resource materials for composition and performance. The article is premised on Cultural Dynamism and relies on data generated from Yorùbá dùndún practitioners using the ethnographic techniques. Drawing on Olaniyan’s scholarly contributions, the ingenuity of dùndún practitioners in adopting oríkì (praise chant/music), òwe (proverbs), ìtàn ìbílẹ/orin àbáláyé (folk history/folk song), àfojúinúwò (imagination) and ìşẹlẹ ojú eré (contextual occurrence) to craft their musical art and their contextual appropriateness was analyzed. Findings showed that there is a decline in performance dexterity, less opportunities for knowledge and skill acquisition on resource materials, as well as lower required discipline level and diligence for distinctiveness in modern dùndún performance. The argument is that a gradual shift from the normative Yorùbá music aesthetic assessment and the challenge of absolute meanings on and at different levels has implications for the promotion of dùndún music making now and in the future.

The agency of music to effectively convey ideas in movies and articulate visual-emotional experience of the audience during mise-en-scene has long been established. Existing studies have focused more on the elements that characterize film as a visual experience, than on the diegetic  (foreground) and non-diegetic (background) music, especially along their aural aesthetic lines. This article, therefore, investigated the aesthetic  connections between traditional and performative significations of music in selected movies of Túndé Kèlání, one of Nigeria’s foremost  cinematographers. Using a qualitative (videographic) research design, three movies, Ti Oluwa N’ile, Saworo Ide and K’oseegbe, were purposively  selected, based on their unique aesthetic traits and distinct cultural identity quality, for content analysis. A close reading of the musical and textual  data was done. Findings revealed that cultural themes in the movies, bordering on entertainment, rituals, politics, philosophy, didactic, panegyric and  dirge, were projected through African and Western musical instruments, while folklore and folksongs constituted major sources of materials  and cultural signifier. The authors argue that examples of the dialectic and sequential troughs in the performance of music exemplify aesthetic  reinforcement, not only in terms of the didactic functionality it expresses, but also in what it conceals.